


While The Dew Is Still On The Roses

by JustOnlyGinger



Series: Carnival [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, M/M, Public Humiliation, Public Sex, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:24:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4330218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustOnlyGinger/pseuds/JustOnlyGinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim's wife? That woman is trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While The Dew Is Still On The Roses

Jim watches dispassionately as his wife is led naked across the arena of packed sand and lowered to her knees in front of a crude framework of steel pipes; her neck and wrists are quickly chained into place, and one of the men who fitted her into the contraption draws his hand back and slaps her viciously on the ass as soon as she's immobilized. She cries out in the midst of a sudden and unnerving silence; all the merriment has come to an abrupt halt, the drummers' hands stilled, the singers stopped mid-note as if their throats were cut.

Everly isn't here, but one of his deputies is on hand to do the sentencing. He's a roundish man, short, going bald, eyes pale and vague behind square-framed glasses. He lays one hand on Grey's back, and she snarls, trying to twist her neck around and bite him though she must know he's well out of range of her snapping teeth.

“This woman has been nothing but trouble,” he says, addressing the crowd and giving the bound Grey's ass another good smack. “I throw her upon your mercy. I give her to you to do with as you wish, and afterwards she will be returned to her master and the two of them will leave with all speed, never to be seen in this country again. These are the words of Caratacus, master of Carnival. This is his will, be it ever so well-intentioned, and may it be done by those whom he considers close to his heart.”

“Maybe he can reconsider,” says Andrew; he's been standing at Jim's side, but Jim had nearly forgotten he was there. “This doesn't need to happen. This kind of punishment... it's too much. You can't-- don't do this to her, please.” Andrew's pleading is quiet, its tone familiar; how often, after all, has Jim heard him use words like that? The difference is that now he's not begging for his own dignity to be spared; Jim would guess that he gave that up long ago.

“We have all entered into an agreement. We have given Caratacus the power to pass judgment here, while these fires burn. Caratacus holds the position of highest authority, and through his own virtue has become fit to rule his fellow men. This is his will, be it ever so well-intentioned.”

“You said that already.”

“Andy, stop. You can't fight. It won't help her.”

“Jim, you can't let this happen. She's your wife, for Christ's sake.”

“There's nothing I can do.” Indeed there isn't, and Jim does feel a certain amount of regret as he watches a young man holding a whip step up behind the trussed and helpless Grey; she seems barely to be breathing, her small brown breasts hanging freely in air, moving ever so slightly with the expanding and contracting of her chest. Her head is lowered, her green hair trailing.

“Goddamnit, Jim. Can't you do something? Can't you stop them?”

Jim raises a hand to silence Andrew, and steps forward. He addresses the man holding the whip; he's young and attractive enough, a bland blond-haired beast of burden, sort of pleasant and beefy and vague.

“Hey there, Tex. Don't you dare go easy on that bitch, you hear me?” Andrew makes a low heartbroken noise in his throat, Grey lets out another indignant yowl, and the man with the whip hangs his head and looks somewhat abashed, his weapon trailing from his heavy nerveless hands. He glances up at Jim, frowns uncertainly, a strained and sorry look in his big guileless blue eyes.

“It's Max, actually,” he says; drawling a little, Jim does have an uncanny knack for recognizing his countrymen.

“Well, Maximilian,” says Jim, “get on with it.” Young Max nods, businesslike, and hefts the whip in a distinctly unpracticed manner. Jim can't help but notice that he doesn't seem to know what he's doing at all; he practically unbalances and goes over backwards as he lifts the whip up over his shoulder, and the first time it strikes Grey's offered rump, she scarcely flinches.

“For God's sake. Harder than that. Here.” Jim steps forward, snatches the whip from Max, and starts to lay about him with it; not hitting anything just yet, making showy little snakelike strikes and snaps in thin air. “Like this,” he says. “You've got to put your shoulder in it. Show some control. Use the wrist, like so.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Andrew again; Jim never can persuade him to shut up for very long.

“That's enough,” says Caratacus' man. “No interfering.”

“Your honor, the boy is making a hash of this punishment.”

“Just beat her,” the deputy says. “Never mind him, just do it.” Young Max, looking distinctly unnerved at this point, accepts the whip from Jim and wields it uncertainly. This time he manages to land a good one on Grey's upper thigh, causing her to yelp and twist wildly in her bonds. Emboldened, Max leans into it, flexes his truck-tire biceps, starts laying into her like he means it; flashes, cracks, snaps, the long heavy whip sizzling through air, rearing and weaving like a living thing. Grey's screams turn to sobs, and back to screams again; Andrew is catatonic at Jim's side, stiff-legged, standing there like a man carved out of wood.

“That's it, boy.” Jim can see angry red welts blooming on Grey's skin, blood starting to well on the surface. She'll never quite recover from this brutal thrashing, he knows, will carry the marks of the whip for the rest of her life.

“That's how you deal with a troublesome woman, isn't it?” Jim realizes then that his cock is hard; the day, the crowd, the air of anticipation, Grey's screams and Andrew's obvious discomfort, they've all gone straight to his goddamn reproductive organs. Max grunts as he plies his whip, sweat standing out on his forehead, gleaming wet and bright on his bare chest.

At last, breathing heavily, Max steps aside and lowers his arm. Another young man saunters up to the bound Grey, loosening his trousers; as if she hears the jingle of his belt buckle and knows what it portends, she starts to struggle anew, thrashing in her chains, turning her head to gnash her teeth impotently at the framework of steel tubing that cages her in.

“Do whatever you like,” Caratacus' deputy says; the man is utterly disinterested, picking at his fingernails. In the distance, the musicians have started to play again. People are circulating, migrating from fire to fire, no longer fixated on Grey and her disgrace. The spectators who remain are nearly all men, nearly all out of their trousers, nearly all hard.

“You're in trouble, my dear,” says the one positioned directly behind her. Another-- redheaded like Andrew, though shorter and leaner and not quite so magnificent- has come up to stand beside her and begun rubbing her tits. It's obscene, their looseness, the pendulous way they hang there, and the man groans as he mounds them together and presses his stiffening prick against Grey's side. Jim slips a hand down his pants and grasps himself, letting Andrew's increasingly frequent looks of utter loathing glance off the side of his head.

“Troublesome woman,” grunts the redheaded bloke. “I'll show you trouble, sweetheart.” Grey yowls like a cat when the man behind her steps forward decisively and slams his cock into her; Jim watches her tits bounce and shudder as she's fucked, as the man standing in front of her grasps her by the back of the neck and starts feeding his cock into her mouth. Andrew sways on his feet like a wounded ox, looks as if he's about to collapse at any moment, as if he can't possibly endure to remain conscious before this scene. Jim pities him, in a distant and rather disdainful way.

Then Jack arrives- little Jack, with his clever pointed face and cloud of curly dark hair, his spindly limbs and scatterings of freckles-- and he doesn't balk like Andrew, doesn't sneer or scorn or shout, doesn't even reach for his dick as he makes his way towards the helpless woman in the makeshift stocks. He strokes Grey's hair back, gathers it in his hands, holds it, strokes her back as the men surrounding her swarm forward. He's saying something, but Jim can't quite hear him; Jack repeats the same words over and over again, a single phrase, low and soothing, and his hand strays between Grey's legs, makes room for itself alongside the cock of the man currently fucking her. Jim can see Jack's fingers start to dance, to rub intricately at the folds of her pussy. He's teasing her clit now, making her cry out with something other than pain and indignation.

“Good girl,” Jack's saying; Jim can hear him now, hear his low soft-voiced murmuring, all fond and gentle and sweet, the way he's never heard Jack speak to anyone before, let alone a woman.

“What is he doing?” Andrew hisses in Jim's ear; he seems catatonic still, standing and swaying in place, his eyes glassy and his big ruddy peasant's face gone pale as chalk. He has both hands thrust in the pockets of his old jeans, the thumbnail of one picking ceaselessly and nervously at an unraveling thread.

“He's helping her,” Jim answers, shading his eyes to peer across the circle of sand at Jack and Grey, who are alone at last, the rest of the onlookers having retreated to a respectful distance to catch their breath and rearrange their clothes. Jack is still talking softly to the bound woman; Grey, no longer struggling, all the tension gone from her posture, her body loose and easy. She's relaxed, rising as if to the stirring of a lover's touch as Jack's fingers continue their gentle work between her legs. If Jim holds his breath and strains his ears, he can just about hear what Jack's saying.

“Pretty girl. Shh now, pretty, it's all right. That was a nasty business, wasn't it? Poor thing, it's not your fault. Poor thing. Don't cry now...” Grey moans and shivers and shudders; Jim can see that she's been brought to climax by Jack's patient stroking. Jim recalls their wedding night, Grey making those same small noises, the way her strong body flexed and heaved beneath him as he entered her for the first time; her cries of pain, his shushing, the blood that stained the threadbare sheets of their marriage bed.

Andrew and Jim approach Grey together as Caratacus' man unfastens her from the framework of pipes; he lets her fall, but Jack and Jim are there to catch her.

“Poor darling,” Jack's saying. “That was rough, wasn't it? You're all right now. Come with us. You're all right.”

“What are you doing here?” Andrew, sounding too traumatized to be indignant; Jack faces him fearlessly as ever, looking up from underneath the brambly tangle of his hair.

“I heard about the punishment. I thought you two would need some help.”

“She's Jim's wife. You ought to let him handle it.”

“Never mind, Andy.” Jim helps Jack support the limp and stumbling Grey, and the four of them pick their way along the stony ground and back to their encampment near the fringe of the wood. Once there, Jim boils water and fetches clean rags, sends Andrew to borrow some ointment for pain. He and Jack spread Grey's unprotesting body on a blanket by the fire, and Jim remembers the light of the bright beeswax candles, that first night he looked at her like this.

“You've been a very good girl,” Jack says, stroking Grey's hair while Jim swabs the crusted blood from her ass and thighs. “Remember, that's the worst they can do to you. They'll never break your spirit like that.”

“I'm not so sure she agrees.” Grey is silent, still, embracing the ground with all four limbs, looking as if she wants to sink into the earth.

“It'll be all right,” Jack persists, his hand between Grey's legs again; she groans as he rubs her pussy, turns her head and hides her face in the blanket underneath.

“Get your greasy little fingers out of my wife, Jack Orion,” Jim chides him, not really meaning it, not really caring at this point who's been plunging what into Grey's sore cunt; Jim, of course, will try to be considerate, won't fuck her again himself until she's had time to recover.

Andrew returns (Jim hadn't noticed he'd left) with another blanket and spreads it gently over Grey, who's now sobbing quietly as Jack strokes her. Andrew sits down tailor-fashion on the ground, pulls the woman's hand into his lap. She doesn't protest, allows him to cradle her little fine-boned paw between his big rough palms as Jack makes bolder and bolder inroads on her nether regions. Right there, with Jim watching and Andrew within earshot at least, Jack pulls his trousers down and lets his cock out. He mounts Grey from behind, and she rises up instinctively to meet him, makes the most pitiful little huffs and snorts as he fucks her. Finally she stills, stiffens, and falls back down with a sigh; tears on her cheeks, smile on her lips, to all appearances fast asleep.

“Would you look at that,” says Andrew, emptily, as if the day's events have completely exhausted his supply of intelligent observations.

“She's asleep, isn't she?”

“I've done my best.” Jack shrugs, rearranges his clothes, creeps off to take his own rest in his hammock strung high in the grove of birches up the path. Jim lies down between his wife and the cooling fire, watches Andrew settle massively on her other side; his body like a series of glacial erratics, rumbling boulders coming ponderously to rest. Jim closes his eyes, listens to Grey's breathing: deep and peaceful and even, and Andrew's, punctuated with surprisingly girlish little snores. Moonlight and warm wind wash over him as he lies by his fire, and a distant drumbeat soothes him off to sleep.


End file.
